Rules of Conflict (7 page)

“Define
something else,
Sam.”

“It was supposed to make me hear things. See things. Feel things,
deep in my body.”

“That’s an odd function for an augmentation. Why was it made that
way?”

“Because they wanted to study my reactions. Because they wanted to
see what I’d do.”

“They?” Pimentel glanced down at his recording board, then back at
Sam. “Who’s they?”

“The ones—” Sam blinked away images that flashed in his eyes like
the patterns. Faces. Gold. White. The gold ones spoke. He couldn’t understand
the words. “The ones who put it there.”

Pimentel continued to write, the scratch of his stylus filling the
small room. “Were you implanted against your will?”

“Yes.”

“You felt paralyzed? Not in control?”

“Ye—” Sam could feel it again. The clench of anger that told him
he was being maneuvered “Have I told you this before?”

Pimentel shook his head. “No, this is new. For the past few
months, you’ve been insisting you’re a xenogeologist. You showed me papers
you’d written, books you’d had published.” He pocketed his stylus and rocked
back in his seat. “You had taken those papers and books from the SIB Archives,
Sam. They weren’t yours.”

“No, I—”

“Sam, the e-scan didn’t reveal a Service augmentation. It only
confirmed what we’ve known for months. You have a tumor, in your thalamus,
that’s affecting your memory. It causes you to forget events that really
happened, and to substitute fabrications to fill in the gaps.”

“A tumor?” Sam poked the back of his head, then let his hand fall
back into his lap. Silly. It wasn’t as though he could feel the thing if he
probed long enough.

Pimentel nodded. “It hasn’t increased in size over time, but we
need to remove it.”

“I’ll die.”

“If we take the tumor
out
, why would you die?”

“They—they told me I’d die, if anyone took it out.”

“No, you won’t, Sam.”

“Yes, I will!”
I know.
“This . . . tumor—it’s
not hurting me, it’s not affecting my life, my work.”

“Sam, it
is
starting to interfere with your ability to do
your job.” Pimentel stood and walked to his desk. “You’ve built a reputation
over the years as a first-class archivist. But now you’re losing papers,
forgetting where you filed them, making up stories that they were stolen.” He
leaned against the desk as though he needed the support. “You need treatment.”

Sam stared down at the floor. Dull grey lyno, flecked with white.
He recalled seeing a stone that resembled it. Holding it in his hand. The where
escaped him, however. The when.

“Sam, you don’t state the names of any family or friends in the
Emergency Notification block in your chart.”

“There is no one.”

“No one you can talk to? No one you feel you can trust?”

“No.”

Pimentel returned to his seat. “Do you know what a ward of the
Commonwealth is?”

The clench returned, stronger this time. “It means I’m supposed to
trust a member of the government to take care of me.”

“No, to help
you
take care of yourself. And it isn’t just
one person. It’s a committee. In your case, it would consist of an impartial
civilian official, a Service adjudicator, and a medical representative.”
Pimentel smiled. “Most likely me, as your attending physician.”

“No.” Sam slid off the examining table. His feet struck the lyno
that reminded him of stone. “I’ve trusted members of the government to take
care of me before. That proved a mistake.”

“When, Sam?”

“I don’t remember.”
Don’t ask me what I remember. Ask me what I
know.

He waited until after midnight to return to the SIB.
Odergaard had left a note requesting Sam stop by to see him before start of
shift later that day. That didn’t bode well. If previous events repeated, that
meant another document had turned up missing.

Sam sat at his desk, head in hands. Pimentel had made him promise
to consider the wardship, and he had said he would. Anything to get out of that
place.

No one cuts into my head. Ever.
He left the cubicle maze of
the doc tech bullpen and walked down the hall to the vend alcove. He bought a
cup of tea, striking the beverage dispenser with a timed series of thumps the
techs had discovered made it disgorge an extra mouthful into the cup. Since he
was the alcove’s only visitor, he had his pick of tables. He chose one in the
corner, farthest from the entry.

He activated his handheld and pulled up the file he had
unfortunately found many reasons to update over the past weeks. In one column,
he had listed all the documents that had gone missing, in the other, the ones
that had eventually turned up. He sorted, ran a discard, and examined the few
items that still remained outstanding.

The roster. Shipping records. Death certificates
. The
roster and records belonged to the CSS
Kensington
, the flagship of the
group that executed the evacuation of Rauta Shèràa Base.

And the death certificates?
Ebben. Unser. Fitzhugh. Caldor.
Three officers and a Spacer First Class, who died during the evacuation.

Sam stared at the small display and tried to divine a pattern from
the list of documents. Like flecks in stone, they seemed anarchic, unconnected.
But he sensed history, just as he would if he studied the stone. If he
subjected the stone to elemental analysis and investigated the site at which
he’d found it, he would know how it formed, and why. So, too, with these
documents—they could be broken down, as well. Every entry had another piece of
paper to back it up, and when he had uncovered those pieces, well, then he’d
know, wouldn’t he? He never liked to conclude ahead of his data. At the
beginning, it was enough to know that sufficient reason existed for the data to
be collected.

He sipped his tea, heavily creamed and sugared to obscure the
bitterness. Not like at his old stomping grounds on Banda.
The university
.
There, they knew how to make tea.

“And I knew how to drink it.” He recalled overhearing a shopkeeper
brag to another customer one day as he made his purchases.
No one in
Halmahera knows tea like Simyam Baru—

Sam paused, then checked the nameplate on his handheld.
Duong
.
First name Sam, rhymes with Mom.

“My name is Sam Duong.” But pictures formed in his imagination
again. He saw himself encased in ice, then heard the hissing crackles as
fissures formed in the block. Water dripped as the melting progressed,
revealing who he truly was. Another man, who hated hospitals, too.

Again, not something he remembered. Something he knew.

Evan stood before his shallow bank of roses and
inventoried the status of each bush in turn. “The Crème Caramel’s looking
good.” He dictated the observation into his handheld as he hefted a branch
laden with butterscotch blooms. “Tell your Dr. Banquo she knows her
fertilizer.”

Banquo . . . Banquo.
Evan paused, his finger
pressed against the handheld touchpad, as the names cascaded in his head.
Banquo . . .
Mako
.
Mako . . . Pierce.
“It’s been over two weeks,
Quino. I just wondered if you’d scrounged anything about Colonel Pierce. The
more I think about that name, the more familiar it sounds.” That was a lie, but
he’d had lots of time to ponder the colonel’s snub, and the more he thought
about it, the more it bothered him. Information flitted throughout military
bases at speed—he wondered if Pierce knew something, something that made him
feel he didn’t need to hide his dislike for his fallen minister. Perhaps the
Service had reopened its investigation of Jani’s transport explosion. Perhaps
it had found a witness, someone who had stumbled past the comroom just as Evan
had contacted the fuel depot where the transport was hangared. Saw him enter
the comcode. Heard him say the words.

Do it.

He grunted in pain, and looked down to find he had gripped the
Crème’s branch too hard, driving the thorns into his hand. He hunted through
his pockets for a clean dispo, dabbed at the welling beads of blood, and moved
on to the next shrub. “I’m not sure about this Wolfshead Westminster. It’s
still washed-out rust instead of bright orange, but I don’t know what you
expect. It’s a cold-weather hybrid that thrives by waterside, and we’re only in
the middle of the hottest, driest summer in thirty years.” He flicked off the
device and shoved it in his pocket. “Report’s over for the day, Quino. You want
to see how your goddamn roses are doing, drive up here and check them yourself.”

His knee ached less than it had for weeks—a walk seemed in order.
He strode to the end of the garden, then turned and paced alongside the
two-meter-tall hedge that defined his boundary with the neighbor who he’d been
told worked for Commerce Purchasing. Then he made a balance beam of the edge of
his patio and finished the traverse by walking along the latticed polywood
fence that formed the barrier between him and the neighbor who he’d been told
slaved for the Commonwealth Mint. He knew better, of course. Prime Minister’s
Intelligence, both of them. He’d have bet his last bottle.

When he cut by the garden and stood again at the spot at which he
had started, he checked his timepiece. “Elapsed time for inspection of the van
Reuter fences—seventy-two seconds.” And he had even walked slowly this time.

How do people live like this?
Cheek by jowl. Sounds of
their lives commingled into one vast blare. Everyone knowing their business and
them knowing everyone else’s, without one minute’s privacy or peace. They all
must have developed a zoo-animal mentality, he decided, living their lives as
their instincts compelled them without caring who saw what.

“Sir!”

Evan turned. Halvor, his aide, stood on the patio, looking
befuddled as usual. “
Yes?
”

The young man hesitated. “You have . . . a visitor,
sir.”

Evan trudged up the shallow incline toward the house he thought of
as his Elba. “Quino isn’t supposed to stop by until tomorrow.”

Halvor’s face, smooth and rounded as an overgrown baby’s, flushed
pink. “It’s not Mr. Loiaza, sir.”

“Well, who is it?”

Halvor told him.

Evan took care to follow his aide at a carefully
calculated distance. Too close, and he’d seem anxious. Too far, and he’d seem
apprehensive.
Stay calm . . . stay calm.

After the glaring brightness of the outdoors, it took a few
seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light of the sitting room. He
didn’t register the figure standing in front of the curtained window until it
spoke.

“Hello, Evan.” John Shroud stood with his back to him, his
attention focused on the view of the rear yard. “You’re due for a medical
checkup. Compassionate visitation, the Jo’burg Convention calls it. Guess who
drew the short straw?”

Evan motioned for the flustered Halvor to leave the room. He sank
into his favorite lounge chair and waited for the hushed click that indicated
the door had closed. “You expect me to believe you flew in from Seattle just to
check my vitals?”

“You’re an ex-Cabinet Minister, Evan. You rate Big Three
attention.”

“Bullshit.”

Shroud turned slowly. “As you wish.” He had employed his albinism
like a fashion accessory, as usual. Today, he resembled a polished marble of a
medieval monk. He’d brushed his stark white hair forward and had dressed in
ivory from head to toe, the collar of his jacket draping like a cowl. His
height, thinness, and long face reinforced the image, as did his blanched skin,
drawn tight across cheekbone and brow. Disturbing, no matter how often you’d
seen him. The ambassador from the Other Side.

I should have expected this
. Evan wished he’d had the sense
to prepare, but except for a quick swig prior to tending his roses, he’d had
nothing to drink that morning. As ever, abstinence proved a mistake. He always
felt more in control with a half liter of bourbon warming his insides. “What
really brings you to Chicago, John?” As if he couldn’t guess.